The Trouble with Mirrors

A fellow student, Claire, who was one of several very nice parents who had allowed me to use her son as a model for the 'Never Work with Children . . . ' shoots I had done, approached me a couple of months back, and asked was I interested in doing another shoot for her.  But this time, it was to take photographs for the shop and gallery where she worked, of some of the products sold there.  The photographs were to be used on a price list sent out to potential customers, and the products were the work of Nick Munro - heres a link to his online shop and website - Nick Munro .

I jumped at the chance - though I must admit, I gulped when Claire told me that alongside bar ware and some jewellery items, there were also mirrors to be photographed.  She explained that for the purpose of the price list, the images were to be high key lit, plain white background - oh boy - that was going to be fun, with mirrors!

I had a chat with Colin, who as always, was very helpful - he suggested that the mirrors could be photographed in the big light tent, with the camera lens shooting through a 'slot' in the front cover of the tent - sounded good, so booked the studio.  I knew I had a tight time frame to complete the shoot, as Claire would have to bring the items from the shop in Chester, and return them by early afternoon.  Colin kindly agreed to be on hand to help, so it was all systems go.

Arrived on the day to find that Colin was sadly poorly, and hadn't been in to set up the studio for the high key lighting needed - black back drop, firmly in place, and no one available to help me set up.  Added to that, no one knew where the light meter or the flash set up was - Oh boy - starting to panic.

I owe huge thanks to Stewart, who was in that day, and who dropped everything to help - thanks Stew - I really, really appreciate that you were there !

Claire arrived with the products - absolutely gorgeous items - a series of dull silvered bar ware, and a selection of cufflinks.  And - of course - the dreaded mirrors - that turned out to be too big for the light tent !

ARRRGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH !

With Stewarts advice, however, a plan of action was formed, to tackle the obvious difficulties .  As the brief was to produce images of the mirrors, on a white background, reflecting white outwards, the mirrors were positioned facing the now set up white backdrop.  To avoid reflections, I had to balance and shoot from a very odd angle, whilst Stewart tried to stop me overbalancing.  Later, in photoshop, I would have to 'cut' the mirors out of the cluttered background, place them on white, and use various tools to change the perspective and angle of the items.  Again,. Stew gave me several tips on how I could tackle this in photoshop - which, Thank Goodness, I am pretty familiar with !

These are two of the original photographs I came up with, at the shoot . . .

They look pretty awful don't they?  However, several hours in photoshop, and I managed to turn them into these  . . .

I had a pretty good idea how to approach the post production necessary for this job, but I learn't a lot more, and refined several techniques that I hadn't had much cause to use before, so this was a really valuable learning curve for me.

Back to the shoot, and onto the bar ware.  The only slight problem here was in positioning the bar ware against the white backdrop, the green screen that had been put up at the opposite end of the studio was reflecting in it - more post production, but thankfully - a very easy job to correct this in photoshop.

Then - with time flying by - onto the cufflinks.

The first lot was a series in silver and white, and silver and black, each cufflink featuring a number from '0' to '9' - I used the light box for these, and was also able to borrow the uni's macro lens. With the numbered cufflinks, the shots needed to be taken from above, featuring the 'face' of each item - no problem from the point of view of shooting, the 'mount' attached to the light box took care of that - but the 'fixings on the back of the cufflinks made it difficult to position them so that the 'faces' pointed straight up into the lens.  We got round this by cutting 'slits' into white card, which was suspended on 'blocks', and pushing the 'fixings' on the jewellery through the slits.  This allowed the cufflinks to be firmly held in the position needed.  In post production, I needed to play around with levels a little, but it wasn't too bad - the problem with all the jewellery, is that it was from stock used for display purposes, and with the macro lens, it was evident that the silver on each was covered in tiny little scratches that really showed up .  Again, not difficult to improve in photoshop, but very fiddly and time consuming - some of  the finished pictures of this set

The last set to be photographed were more cufflinks, this time blocks of colour, set in more silver.  I struggled slightly, with some of the colours - the dark blue looked black - and again, little scratches really showed up.  However, more post production, quite easy in this case, and they were done .

I actually finished the shoot bang on time, which I was very pleased with, considering some of the obsticles I'd faced .  Completely new territory for me, and the experience provided me with several examples of finding a solution when faced with previously unencountered problems on a shoot, that may well help me in future work.  It was also valuable experience of working to a detailed and definite brief, and to a tight deadline . Claire later confirmed that the photographs were suitable for the the purpose they were intended for, so big thanks, Claire, for giving me a shot at this . And again, thanks to Colin for the advice he gave me in advance, and to Stewart, for his much needed and appreciated help on the day.